1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to a method, system, and program for managing I/O performance between host systems and storage volumes.
2. Description of the Related Art
A storage service provider may maintain a large network, such as a Fibre Channel Storage Area Network (SAN), to service the computing needs for one or more customers. The SAN includes numerous host systems including the customer applications linked via a Fibre Channel fabric to one or more storage systems, such as one or more interconnected disk drives configured as a Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID), Just a Bunch of Disks (JBOD), Direct Access Storage Device (DASD), etc. Typically, a customer will pursue a service level agreement (SLA) with the storage service provider concerning the criteria under which network storage resources are provided, such as the storage capacity, network throughput, I/O response time, I/O operations per second, and other performance criteria under which the network resources will be provided. In certain situations, multiple customers with different levels of requirements specified in their service level agreements will share the same network resources. This requires that the storage service provider monitor and manage the network resources to ensure that the different customer requirements specified in the different service level agreements are satisfied.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art to provide a method to specify the service level agreements and performance requirements to ensure that customers of these storage resources receive service according to the agreed upon performance criteria for providing the network resources.